In the nirvikalpa samadhi Sri Ramakrishna had realized that Brahman
alone is real and the world illusory. By keeping his mind six months on the
plane of the non-dual Brahman, he had attained to the state of the vijnani,
the knower of Truth in a special and very rich sense, who sees Brahman
not only in himself and in the transcendental Absolute, but in everything
of the world. In this state of vijnana, sometimes, bereft of body-consciousness,
he would regard himself as one with Brahman; sometimes, conscious of the
dual world, he would regard himself as God's devotee, servant, or child. In
order to enable the Master to work for the welfare of humanity, the Divine
Mother had kept in him a trace of ego, which he described — according to
his mood — as the "ego of Knowledge", the "ego of Devotion", the "ego of a
child", or the "ego of a servant". In any case this ego of the Master, consumed
by the fire of the Knowledge of Brahman, was an appearance only, like a
burnt string. He often referred to this ego as the "ripe ego" in contrast with
the ego of the bound soul, which he described as the "unripe" or "green"
ego. The ego of the bound soul identifies itself with the body, relatives,
possessions, and the world; but the "ripe ego", illumined by Divine Knowledge,
knows the body, relatives, possessions, and the world to be unreal and
establishes a relationship of love with God alone. Through this "ripe ego"
Sri Ramakrishna dealt with the world and his wife. One day, while stroking
his feet, Sarada Devi asked the Master, "What do you think of me?" Quick
came the answer: "The Mother who is worshipped in the temple is the
mother who has given birth to my body and is now living in the nahabat,
and it is She again who is stroking my feet at this moment. Indeed, I always
look on you as the personification of the Blissful Mother Kali."

Sarada Devi, in the company of her husband, had rare spiritual experiences.
She said: "I have no words to describe my wonderful exaltation of
spirit as I watched him in his different moods. Under the influence of
divine emotion he would sometimes talk on abstruse subjects, sometimes
laugh, sometimes weep, and sometimes become perfectly motionless in
samadhi. This would continue throughout the night. There was such an
extraordinary divine presence in him that now and then I would shake with
fear and wonder how the night would pass. Months went by in this way.
Then one day he discovered that I had to keep awake the whole night lest,
during my sleep, he should go into samadhi — for it might happen at any
moment —, and so he asked me to sleep in the nahabat."